There's another online petition going around. Once again, for the price of a few clicks, you can change the world. This one's about that whole election thing that happened this week. You know, the one in which 56 percent of people voted and now a similar percentage are upset about the outcome. Some of those upset folks have circulated a Change.org petition that can undo the bad thing that was done on Tuesday. If you just sign it, the electors of the Electoral College will be convinced to vote for Hillary Clinton instead of Donald Trump, and she will become president.

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But wait, you say. Donald Trump was elected through the same democratic process we have always used. He won a majority of electoral votes, like the 44 guys before him. You're right, but that hasn't stopped a bunch of people from trying to get Hillary Clinton installed as president instead. (The petition's title says it all. "Electoral College: Make Hillary Clinton President on December 19." Not even a head-fake towards "elect" or "vote.") They want the electors, who do in many cases have the right to ignore the will of the American citizens they represent, to ignore those citizens and vote for the person that People On The Internet tell them to.

The scenario is possible. They could do it. And in so doing, they would legitimize every claim made by Trump and his supporters: That the system is rigged. That the election would be rigged. That a revolution—yes, a revolution—would be justified. We all watched in shock and horror as Trump supporters talked about open revolt if he lost, and that wasn't justified. But if Trump's legitimate victory in a democratic election were to be ignored, that kind of response would be justified. It would be a subversion of democracy far more reprehensible than Trump's pre-election threat not to honor the outcome of the election.

But Clinton won the popular vote, you might say. More people said they want her to be president. Maybe, but the presidency does not go to the person who gets more votes. For more than 240 years, it has gone to the person who gets more electoral votes. The irony, as Charles P. Pierce pointed out, is that the electoral college system was built to try to prevent the rise of a populist demagogue. Instead, it has enabled it, but it remains the system we use to select our democratic leaders.

The petition has 2.5 million of the 3 million signatures its creators have decided is enough to overturn the outcome of the actual election, which involved just under 120 million people. In the great tradition of slacktivism, these 2.5 million people think a click and a share is worth more than action in the physical world. It would be interesting to know how many of them made their voice heard earlier this week.